So I tried the Drive folder and it worked for a while but now crashes Windows Explorer. The online "help" tells me to change settings that I don't even have on my drive. There is no preferences anywhere!

So, I will use it as I used plain old Google Documents, but am shitcanning the synced folder on my computer

I have a gripe of my own about Google. The fucks won't allow private channels on Youtube. This pisses me off as since they only allow public channels, I had no choice but to disable my channel altogether. I want my shit private and viewable to no one. What's the point of having a channel if I can't control who gets to see it (which in my case, should only be me).

At least I can still access the playlists I already created. Although, I can no longer comment or edit my playlists. This fucking sucks.

I may or may not have bitched here before that my address is duplicated in Flint Township, which has caused me all manner of annoyance. Today I learned that if I look up my address in Google it takes you to the other address, even though the zip-codes are different and I am typing in mine. When I physically moved the pointer on the map to my house and clicked on it, it snapped me back to the street view of the other house. I don't know whether to complain or be happy that random strangers can't see my house when they search. The picture is still there, though. I can see it if I put in my next door neighbors address.

__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette

So, what now? I've seen speculation that the death of the free 800 pound gorilla means that we're going to see a renaissance of innovative RSS readers, and I've seen speculation that this means the death of RSS.

I do too. It's really probably the main thing keeping me tethered to Google at all these days. I haven't been happy with any of the 'offline' readers I've tried before, and I haven't had any real luck even getting through to other web based ones so far today. Which is actually probably a good sign that they can't keep up with demand.

Because without that, what? Go back to having huge, stupid bookmarks again? I don't think people will stand for that, and I don't think RSS will die without something coming in to fill the void, so I vote for innovative new RSS readers, or at least suitable non-innovative alternatives.

There is still a demand, I think, for personally curated, non-social news feeds. I don't want to have to rely on some hivemind to tell me what I want to see, and I don't think I'm alone by a long stretch.

I don't know who the hell John Siracusa is, but I like his take (via Yglesias):

Quote:

1. Drive competing services out of business with a free service (subsidized by a profitable product).
2. Cancel free service.
3. ???

I do sort of wonder why they've even maintained it this long. It obviously wasn't making them any money. Were they actually just keeping it going as a vestige of their former non-evil selves? Did they believe that it would somehow make them money (or pay for itself via data mining value) someday? Or did they not particularly want to be in that space, but didn't want to let others into it either?

I've also checked out Feedly, s_r. It's Google Reader under the hood, anyway, although they've announced that they knew this was coming and have a plan to transition to their own Normandy backend. I don't have a really good feel for it, thanks to everyone else in the world also trying it out today, but so far I don't really care for the web interface. Even in "Titles" view, there's just too much crap and wasted space. I'm also not terribly fond of their insistence that I install a browser extension in order to use their service. I try to keep the number of extensions I have on my work machine to a bare minimum. I haven't yet tried their iOS or Android apps.

I haven't tried any others, but I've heard good things about newsblur.

Also, I am interested to hear what Hitler thinks about Google's decision.

There is still a demand, I think, for personally curated, non-social news feeds. I don't want to have to rely on some hivemind to tell me what I want to see, and I don't think I'm alone by a long stretch.

I'm sort of at a disadvantage because I don't use Twitter ( I used to follow a couple people using, yes, Google Reader before Twitter stopped publishing RSS feeds), so I don't actually know how feasible this is, but I've seen the suggestion that publishers can just start (if they aren't already) tweeting out every new article they publish, and following them on Twitter would then serve the same purpose as following them via RSS. I don't care for that solution, if for no other reason, than because it's senseless to go from an accepted, open, standard to a proprietary format, and introduce reliance on Twitter's infrastructure at the same time.

There is still a demand, I think, for personally curated, non-social news feeds. I don't want to have to rely on some hivemind to tell me what I want to see, and I don't think I'm alone by a long stretch.

This has me somewhat stuck. I was using Reader for just a few blog sites but mostly as an easy access to a few podcasts that I listen to; and Reader worked nearly flawlessly with Listen for Android. Now I have to find a easy, convenient home for that. I'm not nearly as put out as a lot of people who have sworn to Reader. So far from my little bit of poking at it, there isn't a one stop shop for my purposes. I'm hoping Old Reader gets its application up and running. Being able to add/delete/modify feeds on the computer that then updates to the mobile is a key feature that standalone apps don't seem to have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

I'm sort of at a disadvantage because I don't use Twitter ( I used to follow a couple people using, yes, Google Reader before Twitter stopped publishing RSS feeds)

Twitter is just a hot stinking mess for this. I only follow 64 people (or companies) and unless I'm watching it like a guy that watches things a lot it's difficult to get at the good information. My feed gets bogged down with shoutouts and hellos and retweets so finding useful information is a chore, very much unlike how an RSS feed should work.

Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
Posted on March 14, 2013 by @feedly
Google announced today that they will be shutting down Google Reader. This is something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.

It's really hitting me now just how graphical those readers are. Shit's all looking like Pinterest.

Half of the things I've got in my feed don't usually even have pictures, and only a small subset are at all visually focused. Seriously, I've got Pinterest for pictures of stuff. I want a text reader. To read text on.